June 26, 1994, Copyright 1994
MAG MONITOR
The special transistor to fix the MAG 15 inch monitor finally came in. It was promptly installed, the monitor was turned on, and it still does not work. Apparently, the failing transistor took out some other parts. Since MAG is unwilling to sell me a service manual or even a schematic, it is a long road tracing the circuitry.
Since it has been over 5 months with the monitor out or commission, I just might send it in for repairs. It also means that it is not likely that I will purchase another MAG product again. Sony, incidentally, does provide full service manuals for only $15 to anyone who wants one.
I got a chance to work with some NEC 4FG monitors and some other brands recently. That experience made me appreciate the Sony 17se a bit more. Although the Sony has some tension wire hairlines and the convergence problem I talked about before, it still has very good geometry, and a crisp, steady image.
NETWORKING
I finally got up the nerve to try installing the network card in my wife's 386DX computer. It had been having memory parity errors before, and I had to pull the card till there was more time to troubleshoot it.
Calls were placed to Liuski tech support (vendor for the network card) and to Mylex (manufacturer of the mother board). Liuski was not familiar with the type of trouble I was reporting and could only suggest changing I/O base addresses and interrupts. Since I had already gone through some I/O and IRQ variations, Liuski was not much help.
My call to Mylex was a bit more interesting. The tech asked what speed RAM I was using. Since prices on higher speed RAM had come down, I used 60 ns parts. Seems that the Mylex board was designed to use 100 ns RAM! I don't think that I could find any RAM that slow if I wanted to. It still does not explain why the computer works just fine without the network card if the RAM was at fault. The Mylex tech also suggested that the network card might bee too fast for the bus. Interesting.
I borrowed a copy of a diagnostic program to test the RAM with, and without the network card. The program does a very thorough job of testing, but no problems were reported. In addition, all seemed to operate well anyway. Perhaps the last combination of I/O and IRQ settings fixed the problem. Oh, I also installed the network driver that came with the board.
No luck. The computer ran for a couple of days with no hitches. I thought all was well. Then, suddenly, there it was, "Memory Parity Error, System Stopped." My next shot is to replace the network card with a different type. I already had swapped the card for another one of the same type. The card I am using is a 16 bit one, so an 8 bit card might be a good choice to try. More on this later as the story unfolds.
ERGONOMIC KEYBOARD
For the past several weeks, I have been using a new, ergonomic keyboard. This is part of a beta program, so I can't tell you where it is from, or some other details.
I have been using a keyboard drawer for my old keyboard. The first problem I ran into with the new one is that it does not fit into a drawer! It is too wide. After contemplating and trying various modifications to the drawer, I ended up putting the new keyboard on top of my desk. Because of its key placement, it is actually quite comfortable on top.
In using the keyboard, I discovered that you can't cheat. Although I am a touch typist, I still find myself looking down on a keyboard and poking with one finger. With the ergonomic, split layout, it is very difficult to poke on the keys. Touch typing is fine, but looking down, the keys are not in the familiar places!
SUMMER JOB
Summer break at school had arrived and I soon found that the faculty here have three activities. They go back to school to earn a degree. Since I already have two master's degrees, I did not think I would go fro that one. The second choice is to teach summer school. I had enough of the 9 months of classes so I wanted a break. The third activity is to go to work in industry.
Although I had planned to relax and do house fixup during the summer, there was some push for me to choose one of the activities. A couple of instructors were going to work at Los Alamos National Labs. That sounded interesting, but not enough to make me want to go there. I did, however think of Intel.
There was a job fair going on at the school as the semester was coming to an end. One of the participants was Intel. A rep from Intel also visited the Technologies department where I work. He wanted to recruit our school to train students to fill jobs at the Intel Rio Rancho (near Albuquerque) facility. He also said that any faculty wanting a summer job should FAX a resume to Intel.
That is how it started. Next thing I know is that there is a call to schedule my starting date. I went down for per-employment orientation on May 23rd. This was the day I purchased the Second Nature program described later. "Here is your packet of information, and inside is your reimbursement check." Reimbursement check? I was not expecting one. Looking inside I found that the check was quite generous. Nice company, Intel.
June 13th I arrived for several days of formal orientation. This was general stuff telling us where Intel came from, where it is, and where it is going. Also, there were many forms to fill out. The process is quite famous for all of the forms.
On the second day, I could not take just orienting in a lecture room, and started actual work with the group that hired me. Oh, in orientation we did get to package an egg to be dropped from six feet. We were given 12 straws, 12 toothpicks and some tape to do this. Our team's egg survived! We called it the "pyramid with easy ride suspension."
My job at Intel is to set up a computer, link it to a VAX network, and to modify a program written in Paradox. This is a system to keep track of probe heads used for testing Pentium wafers. It is kind of exciting seeing all of those Pentium wafers go by on the test line.
As I suspected, Intel employees can get good discounts on Intel products, but not the Pentium! Intel is selling all it can make and is still having a hard time keeping up with demand. The Rio Rancho plant looks a bit like a war zone with all the construction going on. New building shells all over the place. Let's go, I want my Pentium!
What I was somewhat surprised to find out about the Pentium production, is that all of the wafers going by me were the original Pentium, not the P54. Apparently, the P54s are built at other plants. In case you have not kept up, the P54 is a 3 volt, 0.6 micron line width process. The bottom line is that it runs cool!
A new standard for minimum configuration will be going into effect at Intel on August 1st. The new requirement calls for a 60MHz Pentium with 16MB of RAM, EISA slots, 540MB hard disk, and a 15 inch non-interlaced monitor with 1024 by 768 256 color display. All this with a network card, and I assume, running Windows environment.
Future standard will call for PCI slots. I am surprised that the PCI requirement did not get into the August specifications. There should be enough product already available to fill that need.
NT STUFF
Windows NT 3.5 (Daytona) beta has been released. For some reason, I did not get to participate as I had hoped to. I am particularly sad since it has elicited some very favorable comments from those who did get the beta code.
Also in beta is WinWord 6 for NT. Since I use WinWord a whole lot, and make use of many features, I should have been a good candidate for the beta. But there are selection procedures the Microsoft beta follows and I was not chosen. I can't complain too much. I am part of several Microsoft beta programs already.
OTHER BETA
Parsons Technology included me for beta testing of their new Money Counts version 8. By the time you read this, the product should be released.
You may recall that I switched my wife from Quicken 5 for DOS to Microsoft Money 2.0 for Windows. This was after a disastrous try of Quicken for Windows 3. She has been satisfied with Money, and all accounting is now done on computer using Money. Actually, she also writes down the info in a ledger, but she uses the figures from Money. Quicken for DOS has been abandoned. Microsoft has recently release version 3 of Money, but I have not seen it.
Money Counts is similar to Microsoft Money, but there are differences in approach.
SOUND BOARD
It was time to add sound to my computer. What better sound board to get than the Logitech Soundman 16. Price of this board has dropped quite a bit since a new wavetable version is due out soon. I ordered one directly from Logitech and had it in a few days.
This board is based on the Pro Audio Spectrum chip set and has had favorable reviews. Incidentally, Media Vision (makers of Pro Audio Spectrum) seem to be in a reorganization phase. Their product is good, but the Logitech board sells for less and has the same features.
It did not take long to install the board, but software problems popped up right away. A call to Logitech revealed that they have no intention of supporting NT. I was told to try the Pro Audio driver. I already had done that, but the Media Vision version includes an SCSI interface on the board. Some gyrations of IRQ settings were appropriate to avoid conflicts.
Using the Pro Audio driver, I got sound. It was interesting. although there was a bit of annoying popping occasionally. A bigger problem showed up when I tried to use my network card. Network card error was reported on the system log of NT. Any attempt to access the network resulted in a report of hardware failure.
I went to the trouble of laying out all I/O addresses and IRQs in a spreadsheet. It was an interesting analysis. and I made sure there were no conflicts. But no matter how I tried, I just could not get the network card to work with the sound board. It boiled down to a choice of one or the other. Both would not work.
Now I have a Microsoft Windows Sound System on order and will report on it next time.
WALLPAPER
While visiting Intel for my pre-employment orientation, I stopped by the Egghead store in Albuquerque. There I spotted a rack full of what looked like CD-ROMs. These were nice plastic cases with beautiful scenic pictures of various categories. There were mountains, race cars, trains, paintings, and space images. At $9.95 it seemed very attractive indeed.
All this was part of a series from Second Nature Software. Turns out the CD-ROM cases are a bit deceiving. Inside the case is a 3«, high density floppy disk. The product is a screen saver and wallpaper changer. In addition to the software, there are 20 images on each disk. I went for the "Mountain Splendor" package with beautiful scenes of mountains.
The software works quite nicely, if a little slow. The wallpaper application will change the background scene for you at pre-defined intervals. I have it set for once a day. Each day I get a new scene. Since I don't get along with screen savers, I have that feature turned off. Seems to me that the screen saver always turns on just as you decide to hit a key after some thought.
As you may have surmised, images are heavily compressed. Nice feature of the program is that it expands the image to fit the resolution of your video. Some rough spots in the quality of the image are present at my 1024 by 768 display. It does require 256 color capability, or the image quality is fairly poor.
While the resolution of decompressed images are not as good as you could get, the saving in disk space are very large. Images that would take 700k are shrunk down to only 24K or so. The software does allow you to add your own images in JPEG format. Using HiJaak Pro, I produced several images with various amount of compression. You can get good quality if you can live with larger files. I settled on a compromise. Images which started at 740k were shrunk down to 62k.
I can't do much to improve the images that come with the Second Nature package, but they are satisfactory for wallpaper, and that is their purpose. According to the publisher, profits from the sales of this product are contributed to The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit organization for protecting plants and animals.
MORE WALLPAPER
Prior to getting the Second Nature wallpaper changer, I was using a freeware program. I tried using a batch file to rename a sequence of wallpaper bitmaps, but the freeware program works very nicely. The program Deskwall and comes as DESKWALL.ZIP.
The program allows you to specify a BMP file to set as your wallpaper. You can also have it either cycle through a set of bitmaps, or to pick them at random. I preferred to cycle through the files. By putting the program in the STARTUP group, the wallpaper would change with each bootup. Note that this is different from Second Nature which changes it once a day (or as specified) without regard to number of bootups.
This is a nice program and the price is right. I did switch to Second Nature, but Deskwall is a bit faster. It does not do any decompression, and it takes only BMP files as input.
NEW PRINTER
The HP DeskJet 500 is gone. My sister-in-law has been wanting to buy it from me for a while. We took a trip to California recently, and I set the printer up for her.
Since printed output is an important part of the system, I had to get a replacement soon. What to get? I checked what was available, but also had to keep in mind the support for NT. Irene (my wife) said that it had to be an HP. After years of experience with HP calculators and printers, the quality of their products cannot be dismissed. Besides, HP is the standard of compatibility.
On our trip to California, we stopped by for a visit with Irene's aunt and uncle in Los Angeles. If we don't have to drive through LA again, it will be just fine. Uncle Nick has an HP LaserJet 4L printer, so I got to check it out. I had already narrowed the decision to one of 3 choices.
There was a used HP LaserJet IIP available locally. The new choices were the HP LaserJet 4L or the HP LaserJet 4P. I would have liked the 4 Plus, but the cost was too high. After looking at the 4L, and having some conversations with Carol (a salesperson I know), I decide on the HP LaserJet 4P. Hard copy of this issue was printed using the new printer.
An order was placed with Sehi Computers in San Clemente, CA. Nice people to deal with, good prices, and I had my printer in 3 days! If you need HP products, call Sehi at 800 346-6315, ask for Carol, and tell her I told you to call.
SHAREWARE/FREEWARE
ICONBAR - A new version of Iconbar for NT has been release by Dan Porrey. The new version is 1.01a and is dated 4-14-94. This new version is to fix some driver compatibility problem which were present is the earlier version.
Iconbar is well named. I places an icon bar on your screen. Actually, the program icon buttons can be moved any place you would like, but I prefer to have them all as a bar on the right side of my screen.
After starting Iconbar, an IconBar icon shows up on the screen. Clicking the right mouse button on the icon brings up a menu of choices. One of the choices allows you to add new buttons. Each button can be assigned to a program. The button imports the icon image from the program, or you can designate an icon file.
Unlike DezkTop, which I previously reviewed, Iconbar requires you to double click the buttons. However, I found some compatibility problems with DezkTop and have not been using it. I did run into some installation problems with Iconbar. At first, it kept insisting that one of the required files was missing. Installing it again fixed the problem.
The program is shareware with a price of $10. This is very reasonable, but the author hides the shareware price so well that it took me some time to discover that it was not freeware. Contact the author on Internet at porrey@sumter.cso.uiuc.edu.
WINZIP5B - WinZip has come out with a new version 5.0b dated 3-11-94. This is a Windows program compatible with PKZIP version 2.04g. WinZip does not handle multiple volumes or password protection though.
The program is for 16 bit Windows but will run under NT. It is shareware with a price of $29. I have been using a freeware program named WIZUNZIP which works similarly. WIZUNZIP is not as convenient to use, and does not have all of the features of WinZip, but it is more stable under NT.
CHKMEM - A nifty little freeware utility for NT. It provides a narrow display bar which shows the amount of free memory and the relative system load. When the amount of free RAM gets low, the number display changes from green to red. It also displays the amount of physical RAM in your system.
Since NT uses virtual memory, you do not run out of RAM, but running low on actual RAM will slow things down considerably as disk writing takes place. I have already found which program stress my system, and that 20 meg of RAM should help quite a bit over the 16 meg that I presently have.
The program file is NTCHKMEM.ZIP, dated 3-16-94. This useful utility comes to us from German author Martin Moenninghoff. Recommended for NT users.
WSIMTEL - A Windows database program for keeping track of files available on CICA, SIMTEL, and other Internet repositories. This is a shareware program, but the price of registration is a picture postcard sent to the author, Hans van Oostrom.
If you like cruising the Internet looking for files, this is the program to get. Runs well under NT too. Latest version is 2.1 dated 5-25-94. File name is WSIM21.ZIP.
CP/M
Last time I left you with my attempt to retrieve some information from my old CP/M disks. I discovered the price of progress. The CP/M to MS-DOS format conversion programs which I have will not run under NT or even MS-DOS 5. The catch to all this is that I need the newer DOS to read my high capacity hard disk, but the conversion programs will not run under the DOS!
The end result is that I managed to find the information I needed already converted to MS-DOS. It was in one of the thousands of files scattered all over my gigabyte hard disk. The project was put off for some other time. If I ever get this solved, I will let you know.
CONCLUSION
There is still room, but I am out of time and need to get this out. If you have questions or comments, please let me know. I can make the Shareware/Freeware programs available, or tell you where to find them. I like writing, but if I can make it more interesting to you, I need to hear about it.
Peter's Computer News - Vol 2 No 4 1 June 26, 1994